Maurice Chandler - October 3, 1993
Attending Catholic Church
Go ahead, tell me.
Well, the two, the two boys, you know, they were about, one was 10, other one was 12, maybe--I don't know. And I was talking to them, you know, we were in the field. I says--I was--I told them, I says, "How are you doing in, with your uh, catechism?" He say, uh, he says, "I'm the greatest." I says, "Really, you are?" I says, "I don't think you're so good." I says, like, you know, "You don't sound to me like you're that great of a scholar." So he says, "Test me." So I said, "Okay, let's start. What's the beginning?" So he starts rattling off, you know, what the church is based on and the Holy Trinity and stuff like that, so I got that. I said, "Well, do you follow confession?" I says, "You confess like you should be?" He said, "Of course I do." I says, "I don't even think that you know how to confess." That's what he told me how you go up and you have a, you know, pre-set sentence to say, "I came here to confession, and..."
Forgive me father...
Yeah, ask for your forgiveness and then when you end, then you say a pre-set statement also. I don't remember anymore and blah, blah, blah. So then I felt I had more chutzpah than anything. I says, "What do you confess?" and the kid got red in the face. He say, "Nah," he says, "that's, that's what I can't tell you." And so I learned it over and over. I walked away and I kept repeating it myself, you know, to remember and well, that's when I started going to confession. So anyway, they snuffed us out, you know, when the raided the village and the same people--anyway that guy that asked me about the newspapers--the German papers. Anyway, they took us away to the nearest commandant in Szepietowo. That's the rail station and they have their--it was called their Amtkommissariat. I don't know...
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